The Jburnd ojL~berlarimSludtes, V d VI. No. 2 (Spring 19821
Shelley's Philosophy of Liberty
by Jonathan Mendilow
Department of Political Sciences
Tel Aviv University
The dislocation of established patterns of thought and behavior, under
pressure of the kaleidoscopic changes that for convenience we often ascribe
to the French and Industrial Revolutions, led many to turn nostalgically to
the safety of precedent and custom. Others, however, looked forward expectantly to the actualization of glorious potentialities that would release society
from the shackles of the past. The late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth
centuries thus became an arena where many of the doctrines of authority
and of liberty which form the staple of much modern political thought
battled for supremacy. Among the better-known advocates of liberty were
Erasmus Darwin, Tom Paine, and William Godwin. Shelley is usually
regarded as a disciple of all three, whose views he expressed in rhapsodic
verse. He is also known for his activities against oppression and social injustice among the weavers in Marlowe, the laborers in Wales, and the Irish
rebels. His influence on Chartism and Fabianism is generally acknowledged. However, he is not usually thought of as a discursive prose writer
who contributed to such issues as passive resistance, the National Debt, or
fiscal reform. Above all. his philohophy of liberty is underrated.
In the preface to Promerheus Unbound (1818-1819) Shelley announced
his intention to analyze the concepts of liberty and of authority and to trace
their development in "a systematical history of what appear to me to be
the genuine elements of human society." Indeed, he came to believe that
"poetry is very subordinate to moral and political science"; he conceived "a
great work, embodying the discoveries of all ages, and harmonizing the
contending creeds by which mankind has been ruled."' Though he did not
live to achieve this purpose, his later writings incorporate disparate ideas
embryonic in his earliest works, taking them much further and organizing
them into a coherent scheme. Its fullest expression is in the "Defence of
Poetry" and the "Philosophical View of Reform," two late and closely
related essays presenting Shelley's most fully developed thought.
The "Defence" in particular has often been dismissed as a dithyrambic
outpouring of emotion. Yet on closer examination a very different picture
presents itself. Once one grasps the overall plan and intention, the argument
can be seen as marshalled in a step-by-stev logical progression. The present
paper seeks to analyze Shelley's philosophy of liberty as a breaking of the
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bonds of egocentricity into empathy with other individuals, groups, and
societies. Such attitudes, he claimed, were initiated by individuals such as
Socrates, Jesus, Shakespeare, and Milton, whom he called "Poets in the
most universal sense of the word." From these assumptions he developed a
philosophy of history assuming a wavelike form of alternating progress
and regress, of liberty and authority. We shall try to show that the influence
of these ideas was far more extensive than is commonly assumed, and that
they were echoed even in the writings of such conservative thinkers as Carlyle
and Disraeli.
The basis of Shelley's thought lies in his equation of liberty with creativity, as expressed through the relationship between the self and the nonself. From his earliest writings he showed his familiarity with the skeptical
school of philosophy, as his references to Locke, Hume, Berkeley and
others indicate, and the doctrine of the "everlasting universe of things"
which "flows through the mind" was not peculiar to him.' He held however
that the Ultimate Cause is beyond all apprehension. As early as "Mont
Blanc" (1816) it is symbolized by the hitherto unclimbed peak. As late as
Prometheus Unbound (1819) Demogorgon, answering Asia's query "whom
calledst thou God?" replies "I spoke but as ye peak."^ The effects flowing
from the ineffable Cosmic Power, to the degree that they are perceptible by
the human senses, are given meaning and order by two faculties of the
mind: reason and imagination. Reason is the intellectual or conceptual
exploration and analysis of the modes of existence, their categorization and
arrangement into generalized laws by which man is related to his environment. It is partial and quantitative, the "enumeration of quantities already
known." Imagination, on the other hand, is qualitative, "the perception of
the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole." It is the
"creative faculty," producing the harmony of "the inner faculties of our
nature" with "the external." Therefore "reason is to the imagination as the
instrument to the agent, as the body to the ~pirit."~
Such a distinction was
something of a commonplace among the Romantics. Several decades later,
Carlyle adopted the terms "the mechanic" and "the dynamic" provinces of
the mind for the two faculties, and lamented the decay in his time of the
evaluative and creative faculty, namely the imagination.' Shelley however
took the argument a step further. For him imagination is the motivating
force of liberty, which he saw as breaking the shackles of authority and
releasing our national originality from the impedimenta of past prescription
and restriction. Imagination operates in three interrelated ways. First, it
encourages the mind to encroach on the ineffable unknown by staking out
new grounds and "marking the before unapprehended relation of thing^."^
Secondly, it extends the capacity for communication so that closer relationships develop between new dimensions of experience and the symbolic
media of expression. Thirdly, in the social sphere, it generates sensitivity so
that the individual relates empathically to other people. It thereby leads to
the formulation of new social and moral standards which "repeaVLarge
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171
codes of fraud and woe."' He therefore regarded the interlocking activities
of the creator, the communicator, and the social revolutionary as manifestations of the dynamic of creative liberty. The stages by which he arrived at
such conceptions begin with "the relation subsisting, first between existence
and perception, and secondly between perception and the expre~sion."~
They end with something akin to what we call today information theory.
The primary assumptions underlying Shelley's thesis are familiar. He
argued that sensory impressions set up corresponding vibrations in the
mind, which do not merely copy external phenomena but react to them in a
creative mimesis. "The external and internal impressions" form not a
melody but a harmony; they are different but persist in proportional relationships.9 This harmony is a source of pleasure, which we seek to perpetuate by recalling the sensory stimuli through a medium used symbolicallylanguage, pigment, stone, etc. These in turn become further objects of
pleasure. But the "external world" includes other human beings. "Man in
society", therefore, "next becomes the object of the passions and pleasures
of man; an additional class of emotions produces an augmented treasure of
expre~sion."'~The pleasure in the media is thus extended even more
strongly to the social sensations, and constitutes a further stage in the going
out of our own selves already present in an elementary form in the very
nature of perception.
Perception and the pleasure derived from it imply order, for by means
of it man finds meaningfulness in the welter of stimuli impinging on his
mind. It becomes a function of the expression of human reactions, and in
turn is felt as desirable. Different facets of what we conceive as reality have
their own characteristics which condition the different orders of impression,
which in turn condition the distinct order or rhythm of expression or "mimetic representation." Every branch of stimuli has its own normative form
for the time and place. The poet in the universal sense is he who is most
sensitive to the deeper relationships between all three levels: the sense data,
the Gestalten and value systems we create out of them, and the orders or
rhythms of expression. All creators and expressors of such orders are poets
in this sense, whether they are artists, philosophers, or law-givers." They
constantly extend further the awareness of the mysterious relationships of
the three dimensions of time and "perpetuate their apprehension." Whereas
the ordinary man uses words or signs as equivalents of single separable concepts, the poet sees and formulates new and more complex structures, connections and relations. He creates new combinations forming new associations and new orders generalized out of the isolated particulars.
For Shelley, the process of extending and perfecting our apprehension
of the dimensions of order in the universe and of their relations was of
direct social importance. Man's behavior in society is conditioned by his
understanding of himself and his world. The poet, in creating and perfecting the structures of thinking and feeling, creates thereby the norms and
moral bases of social conduct. It is in this sense that "poets are the unac-
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knowledged legislators of world," laws having not their strictly constitutional meaning, but applying to all spheres of life. Thus poets "are not only
the authors of language and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and
statuary, and painting; they are the institutors of law and the founders of
civil society."12 Social behavior, therefore, cannot be justified by appeal to
absolute Divine injunctions or to precedent. Rather it derives from the
apprehension of the shifting relations between existence, perception, and
expression in a specific time and place. In this respect social morality is
relative.
There is nevertheless a higher order of the ultimate "Power" which,
through incomprehensible to man, unfolds itself by degrees through the
intuition of poets at successive periods. History is not random, and poets
are prophets who advance humanity according to the "indestructible order
of the universe"; for the poet "not only beholds intensely the present as it is,
and discovers those laws according to which present things ought to be
ordered, but he beholds the future in the present, and his thoughts are the
germs of the flower and the fruit of latest time."" Shelley however did not
accept the view that progress is steady and continuous. On the contrary, as
we shall see, he held that the pattern of historical development is wavelike, a
series of crests and troughs.
Crests in the development of societies, as initiated by successive poets,
represent the "Divine pattern" as far as human beings can intuit it. The
human force that engenders the high points of historical development is the
human analogy of the "Divine Creative Power". Shelley called it "Love".
Like other Romantic poets he based his interpretation of Love to a large
degree on the Christian doctrine of charity in its etymological sense, on
Plato's "Symposium" (which he translated), and on the Roman doctrine of
Venus Creatrix, It probably owed something also to Godwin's famous
notion of "Universal benevolence". In his early "Essay on Love" it is described as "the bond and the sanction which connects everything which
exi~ts.'''~
In the "Defence" it is defined as a "going out of our own nature,
and an identification of ourselves with.. .thought, action, or person, not
our
Love therefore is the principle that links existence and perception. It is creative since it enters into fruitful communion, or "Oneness,"
with all that is outside the self, and because it prevents us from getting so
used to things outside ourselves that we can no longer react fully to them.
Liberty of thought, behavior, and expression allows the imagination to
respond to the creative activity of the universe. The evolution of man resolves itself then into an ever-widening and opening out of human sensitivity. It embraces man's sense of identity with his fellow man as revealed in
social orders and relationships. Above all, through its emphasis on consideration for others, it demands toleration based on the idea that all norms
are relative and subject to modification.
The extension of knowledge into the terra incognita of existence, the
creation of new patterns of communication, and the increase of awareness
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173
of new aspects of society must develop unceasingly, the old becoming in
time mere formulae. What stood before for a complex relationship is worn
down to clichi. It is then that "new poets should arise to create afresh the
associations which have been thus disorganized [otherwise] language will be
dead to all the nobler purposes of human interc~urse."'~
Habituation, by
constant repetition of the clich6, intervenes between the self and the nonself. This blunting of response and appeal to outworn formulations is the
mark of authority. It is not other-centered, but self-centered, and the retention of power beyond its vitality span spells egotism. For Shelley this shutting oneself off from the cosmic Power has a negative ethical significance,
for "a man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and many others."" In
this sense Love, as the power diametrically opposed to self-centerednessand
egotism, is a moral regenerator of humanity.
The eternal struggle between the clichC as the vehicle of past-oriented
authority, and Love which is the vehicle of future-oriented liberty, recalls
forcefully what Abraham Moles called the "banal-original dialectic" of
redundance in information theory.l8 The more the communication consists
of items of information already familiar to the receptor through established
codes and precedents, the greater its redundancy and the greater its degree
of triteness. It is the unpredicted and unfamiliar that reduces the redundancy, though it may be at the cost of easy intelligibility. Most communication, therefore, must oscillate between the polar extremes of the cliche
and the esoteric. The greater the reliance on authority and prescriptive
rules, the less the reliance on the freedom of the communicator to express
what is new and original, and vice versa.
It is worth noting the similarity of Shelley's thesis with Carlyle's wellknown theory of the Hero. Already in 1831, nearly ten years before the
"Defence" was posthumously published, Carlyle in Sartor Resartus defined
Love as that which "connects my Me with all Thees," and creates the "Union
of the Like-Unlike." It is a moral force that unites society so that "even the
pitifulest mortal person" is not "indifferent to us." Through "the conducting
medium of fantasy" the "Universe is majestically unveiling, and everywhere
Heaven revealing itself on Earth."19 Those who formulate most sensitively
this sentiment and transmit it most clearly to ordinary mortals so as to
"excite them to self activity" are the Heroes. They are the "inspired [speaking and acting] Texts of that divine Book of Revelation, whereof a Chapter
is completed from epoch to epoch, and by some named History."Zo Like
Shelley's poets "who develop new and wonderful applications of the eternal
truth," and replace by new symbols and metaphors the old which have lost
their vitality, Carlyle's Hero "Prometheus like can shape symbols and bring
new fire from Heaven.""
Both thinkers conceived man as the arena in which two opposing qualities wrestle for supremacy. The same struggle creates the dynamic of social
history as in the essence of historical evolution. Like Carlyle's Devil and
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God coexisting in his archetypal Diogenes Teufulsdrockh, Love and Egotism-the liberating going out of the self and the tyrannical restrictions of
self-centeredness-strive for mastery in Shelley's conception of man. This
Manichaean principle is stated explicitly in the RevoN of Islam, the reworking of his earlier Leon and Cythna, or theRevolution of the Golden City: A
Vision of the Nineteenth Century: "Two powers o'er mortal things dominion hold/Ruling the world with a divided lot/Immortal, all-pervading,
manifold/Twin Genii, equal Gods."22 Likewise, in Prometheus Unbound
the evil Furies, as they torment the good Prometheus, tell him: "We will be
dread thought beneath thy brain/And foul desire round thine astonished
heart,/And blood within thy labyrinthine veins."23 Both writers maintained
that whereas the poet in the universal sense, or in Carlyle's terms the "Promethean Hero", is the agent of Love, egotism has a covenant with "the icy
chains of custom" and habiLZ4Both shared Wordsworth's lament that
"Custom lie upon thee with a weight,/Heavy as frost, and deep almost as
life."2s
Where the two differed was in their conception of the way these opposing
qualities operate in historical terms. Carlyle accepted a "Father Principle".
For him, egotism is the force that transforms natural hierarchy into tyranny
and exploitation. Shelley, by contrast, insisted that the hierarchical "Father
Principle" itself was the source of tyranny and exploitation. In Queen Mab,
which is virtually a versified version of the doctrines of such thinkers as
Paine and Godwin, he claimed that "Kings, priests and statesmen," indeed
all institutions and institutionalism, are "like subtle poison through the
bloodless veins of desolate society." In spite of the remarkable development
and deepening of his thought during his short career, this idea remained
with little change. Though his earlier Godwinian atheism and anarchism
were mellowed, and in the "Defence" poetry even assumed the form of lawmaking or institution-~reating,~6
he retained to the very end his abhorrence
of priests, kings and aristocrats. Even in his latest works he saw the dynamic
of history as the eternal war between the Promethean spirit of liberty and
the Jupiter spirit actuated by the desire to dominate and fetter.
Shelley had no doubt of the final victory of the good in each battle of the
unending war.27 Demogorgon, Jupiter's son and the spirit of historical
inevitability who can only fulfil his mission when called upon by Love, puts
an end to his father's reign just as Jupiter had done to his father Saturn. But
in the final speech of the play he warns that the virtues which bar "the pit
over Destruction's strength" may be called upon to act again, whenever
Eternity frees "the serpent that would clasp her with his length to reassume/
An empire o'er the disentangled d ~ o m . ' ' ~ ~
This dialectic of history was taken up by Disraeli, who was familiar with
Shelley through his valet, and even quoted from the as yet unpublished
"Defence", probably through an acquaintance with Medwin's Shelley's
Papers29 The influence appears most clearly in the Revolutionary Epic,
where the two Genii of History, that of the past and that of the future,
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175
debate before Demogorgon who plays a similar role. However, Disraeli left
the issue undetermined, being unsure of the direction society ought to take,
or of the nature of the process of change.)" Shelley, on the other hand, had
clear opinions on these matters. Repeatedly he insisted that the revival of
poetry in any of its forms "has ever preceded or accompanied a great and
free development of the national will."3' Each triumph marks the release of
another group of people from oppression and exploitation. However, after
each crest of poetical creativity there follows the downward slope when
lesser men apply the victorious principles until they are in danger of hardening into dogma, and a widening gap develops between the letter and the
spirit. Then compromises are arrived at between those who have gained
their liberty and the remaining forces of tyranny, at the expense of those
who are still in bondage. "The liberators. . .in turn become their [the people's]
tyrants.")'
These compromises are described in the "Essay on Christianity" as "so
many trophies erected in the enemy's land, to mark the limits of the victorious progress of truth and justice." In the "Philosophical View of Reform"
the image is repeated: "maxims so solemnly recorded remain as trophies of
our difficult and incomplete victory, planted in the enemy's land."))
Such compromises, which try to make permanent the modus vivendi
with the enemy, spell the corruption of society. "Poetry is ever accompanied
with pleasure" and there can be no pleasure where people do not "open
themselves to receive the wisdom which is mingled with its delight." "The
end of social corruption is to destroy all sensibility to pleasure; and, therefore it is corruption. It begins at the imagination and the intellect as at the
Whereas in the early stages in his writing career Shelley believed in
the approach of the "Golden Age" when all evil would finally disappearin brief, a secular millenium-later he saw no end to historical p r o g r e s ~ . ~ ~
After the crest comes trough. It is important to emphasize that he saw the
alternations of crests and troughs as by no means regular. The crests are far
from equidistant in time, and the waves are not of equal height or depth.
Furthermore, there is a complex of activities involved inthe ascent towards
the crest or descent from it. Literary, philosophical, social, political, and
similar activities cannot, as Shelley repeatedly noted, be synchronized with
any exactitude. Commonly, a high crest is followed by a series of decreasing
crests declining to the trough, and thereafter by lesser ascending crests
increasing to the highest point. But always there is "a reflex in the tide of
human things which bears the shipwrecked hopes of man into a secure
haven after the storms are passed." One principle obtains throughout history: even in the steepest down slopes, "The winged seed [of poetry] lie cold
and low,/Each like a corpse within its grave", until their revival in the next
upward move. Poetry is thus always "the faculty which contains within
itself the seeds at once of its own and of social renovation."'6
This concept of the pattern of historical process is illustrated in brief in
several of Shelley's earlier prose works, such as "Essay on the Revival of
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Literature," "Essay on Christianity," and the Preface to Leon and Cythna.
It is elaborated somewhat further in the "Defence" and yet more fully in the
"Philosophical View." However, in the "Defence" it is admittedly digressive
from the main theme which is the theory of "Poetry" as the mainspring of
liberty, and is largely confined to earlier historical periods. In the "Philosophical View" it is for the most part related to later periods, since there
his concern was essentially with the present and the future. Combining
both, one can see the pattern of the "systematical history" he planned to
write. The factual elements in this scheme are open to serious doubt. But
our concern is with the pattern rather than his selection and interpretation
of facts.
Shelley saw the high points of human achievement in the history of the
Western world as the age of Homer, the age of Pericles, the time of the
Renaissance and the Reformation, and, as he confidently anticipated, the
immediate future of the Europe of his own day. The first period provided
"the elements of that social system which is the column upon which all
succeeding civilization has reposed."" The century preceding the death of
Socrates was preeminent in the arts, philosophy, and "the forms of civil
life," although "Athenian society was deformed by many imperfections,"
such as slavery and the degradation of women. These were gradually erased
"from the habits and institutions of modern Europe by the poetry existing in
chivalry and Christianity" and later by the "modern Eur0peans."3~The time
of the Renaissance and the Reformation witnessed not only a great galaxy
of writers and thinkers, but also saw the challenging of the supremacy of the
degenerate Catholic Church, the peasants' Revolts against the "despotism of
the wealthy," and the founding of the Swiss and Dutch republics. In England the same liberating movement manifested itself in the "passing away of
the strain of conquest."39
Between these high points of spiritual and social liberation Shelley noted
two periods during which spiritual and social tyranny all but stifled the
creative impulse of civilization. The great age of Rome, though it largely
imitated Greek art and culture, nevertheless retained enough of the vital
spirit of creativity to make its contribution to civilization through its powerful sense of order. "The true poetry of Rome lived in its institution^."^^ The
decline and fall or the Roman empire marked the beginning of the period
commonly known as the Dark Ages. However, the sparks of "Poetry,"creativity and freedom, were not wholly extinguished during this long period.
The embers were kept alive by "the mythology and institutions of the Celts,"
and by "the poetry in the doctrines of Jesus," though the "system of liberty
and equality. . .preached by that Great Reformer were perverted to support
oppression" by the Church.41 Jesus had even anticipated the idea of egalitarianism, but "the system of equality which he established necessarily fell
to the ground, because it is a system that must result from rather than precede the moral improvement of human kind."42 The embers burst out in
brief flame during the eleventh century and later in Florence, where "free-
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dom had one citadel wherein it could find refuge from a world which was its
enemy."43
A second great period of darkness followed the Reformation and the
Renaissance, and was associated in England with the Stuart dynasty. Cromwell tried to stem the ebb, but his Protectorate was short-lived owing to "the
selfish passions and compromising interests of man." Shelley did not see the
Bill of Rights of 1688 as a "Glorious Revolution." It was no more than
another compromise "between the spirit of truth and the spirit of imposture, between the spirit of freedom and the spirit of tyranny."44 Nevertheless, corruption and tyranny failed to quench the vital spark in the writing
of Milton. During the eighteenth century the onward march of progress was
slowly and hesitantly resumed. The political philosophy of Locke and his
followers, and "a crowd of writers in France," though far from reaching the
heights of their predecessors, illustrated "with more or less success the principles of human nature as applied in political society."45 Contemporaneously there was a remarkable advance in the "mechanical sciences" and
in commerce. But their effect was limited by the "inartificial forms" of
government and society. Instead of contributing to the spiritual and material
well-being of the people as a whole, they widened the gap between the strata
of society. It was to the credit of the political philosophers that people
became aware of their condition and understood what was happening. The
outcome was the American Revolt and the French Revolution. The former
succeeded in material and political terms, but failed spiritually through the
acceptance of utility as the standard of value. The latter, after its initial
successes, led to a yet steeper decline because of its excesses. After "the great
tyrant" Napoleon, came the Bourbons, who, Shelley maintained, were
repeating the pattern of the Restoration of 1660. Both came after a revolution which saw the execution of a despotic monarch by leaders of high
ideals. Both failed because the people were animated by passions which
debased those ideals. "But in both cases abuses were abolished which never
since have dared to show their face."4bThe final outcome, both in England
and in France, was again a compromise between the true spirit of liberty
and the political institutions of the day.
From his earliest writings both in poetry and in prose Shelley had shown
himself aware of the evils of the society in which he lived. His awareness did
not weaken with the years. However his sense of a historical pattern led him
later to see things in a different light. As we have seen, he held that the great
ideas of the Renaissance had been whittled down by the political philosophers of the eighteenth century. In spite of a brief recrudescence here
and there of the true spirit of poetry, the process of narrowing down persisted. After the French Revolution, political philosophy was further restricted to the doctrine of utility. In the "Defence" he opened his criticism of
his own times with an attack on this approach. He distinguished between
two concepts of pleasure and two concepts of ~ t i l i t y . ~The
' first kind of
pleasure is "durable, universal, and permanent." This, as we have seen,
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results from the progressive "going out of the self' inherent in the nature of
perception, and develops from the child and the savage to the most sophisticated forms of society. The other kind of pleasure is the "transitory and
particular," deriving from the "here-and-now" satisfaction of the self.
Utility may "express the means of producing the former or the latter." In the
former, "what ever strengthens and purifies the affections, enlarges the
imagination, and adds spirit to sense, is useful." In the latter, utility is only
"that which banishes the importunity of the wants of our animal nature."
No one can deny the importance of the "promoters of utility in this limited
sense" in the conduct of "common life," so long as they confine themselves
"to the inferior powers of our nature." However, Shelley maintained that
many of them had taken animal life as the highest value, and thereby "debased the eternal truths charactered upon the imaginations of men."'8 In
effect, he was anticipating J. S. Mill's criticism of Utilitarianism, that it was
quantitative, whereas true happiness is qualitative. In his Autobiography,
Mill conceded that Carlyle had levelled the same criticism before him,
though he was not then aware of the fact.49Both, then, were preceded by
Shelley, though neither could have known the "Defence" or the "Philosophic
View."
Shelley, Carlyle, and Disraeli were indeed close in their doctrines, for
they all saw the philosophy of "Utility" as a dangerous compromise which
had extended the extremes of luxury and want by encouraging the egotism
of the powerful at the expense of the helpless and poor. Love, or the "going
out of the self," had given way to exploitation and the idolization of the self
by the "unmitigated exercise of the calculating faculty."'0 Both Carlyle and
Disraeli would have endorsed Shelley's summarization of the situation:
"poetry and the principle of self, of which money is the visible incarnation,
are the God and Mammon of the ~ o r l d . " ' They
~
too bewailed the weakening of Love, the creative faculty, and the strengthening of the spirit of selfcenteredness; similarly they regarded egotism as the quality that had given
rise to the new aristocracy-of-money that lacked the responsibility of the old
landowners. As Disraeli put it: "Liberal opinions are very convenient. . .for
the rich and powerful. They ensure enjoyment and are opposed to selfsacrifice. The holder of Liberal opinions. . . maintains that the possession of
land is to be considered in a commercial light and no other. He looks only to
the income which it will afford him."'2 This new aristocracy, Shelley maintained, consisted of the middle classes who had once proclaimed the principle of liberty and egalitarianism against the hereditary land-owning aristocracy, but had been seduced by their opponents to share in the despoiling
of the nation.'' Their elevation led these "advocates of equality" even to
accept the pernicious doctrine of Malthus which would throw the entire
burden of the state upon the lower classes, "merely because their opponents
have insolently announced it."" The result, as Carlyle and Disraeli were
also to insist, was the splitting of the people into two classes, the rich who
were becoming richer and the poor who were becoming poorer. The ship of
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state was being driven between the "Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and
despotism" and the country was heading for a crisis.5' But whereas Carlyle
and Disraeli believed that revolution could and should be prevented, Shelley
saw revolution as inevitable and desirable. While they hoped to revive the
responsible paternalism of the old system, he was convinced of the inevitability of a free classless egalitarianism. The spirit of revolution already
reviving in Spain, Italy, Greece, and the Caribbeans6 indicated that a new
wave was building up to a crest which would tower over all the changes and
developments that had occurred since the last great wave of the Renaissance. It was heralded by "such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond
comparison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil
and religious liberty."5' In his verse and prose he repeatedly called it "a new
hirth," literally "a Renaissance."
Shelley died before he reached the age of thirty. From the days when he
rebelled against the flogging system at Eton he tried to put in practice his
ideas of liberty. His exile from England and ill health compelled him thereafter to confine his activity to his writing. Yet he always saw himself as a
Prometheus "chained and bound," as a Christ who had fallen "upon the
thorns of life," or as a dead leaf that helps "to quicken a new hirth" by keeping warm "the wing'ed seeds" through the winter, till they can flourish
again. He was, in his constant premonitions of early death, ready to offer
himself, like the leaders of primitive societies, as a sacrifice to maintain
the life of the people. He did not live to accomplish his purpose of
producing "a systematical history" of human liberty. But the Chartists, the
late-nineteenth-century radicals, socialists and Fabians were responsive to
his "trumpet of a prophecy." The wind of revolution did "scatter as from an
unextinguished hearth ashes and sparks" his "words among mankind."'8
NOTES
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
II.
12.
Percy Bysshe Shelley, letter to Thomas Love Peacock, January 26, 1819.
Shelley, "Mont Blanc."
Shelley, Promerheus Unbound (18191, act 2, sc. 4, 11. 111-12.
David L. Clark, ed., Shelley'sProse, or the Trumpet of a Prophecy (Albuquerque, N.M.:
University of New Mexico Press, 1954), p. 277.
Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times," in H. D. Traill, ed., The Worksof Thomas Corlyle
in 30 Volumes (London: Chapman and Hall, 1907), 27:7. See also William Wordsworth,
Prelude, 1805 version, bk. 2, 11. 217-25.
Clark. Shelley's Prose, p. 278.
Shelley, "Mont Blanc."
Clark, Shelley's Prose, pp. 277, 279.
Ibid., p. 278.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 278-79.
Ibid., p. 279.
Ibid.
I b i d . n. 170.
180
THE JOURNAL OF LIBERTARIAN STUDIES
Spring
17. Ibid., pp. 283, 208.
18. Abraham Moles, Information Theory and Esrheric Perceprion, trans. J. E . Choen,
(Urbana. Chicano. and London: Universitv of Illinois Press. 1968).
.. D. 124.
19. ~ a r l y l e , ' ~ o ~ o r i & a r rin
u sWorks,
,
152-53, 107, 153-54. '
20. Ibid., p. 21. See also Carlyle, Heroes and Hero- Worship, in Works, 5:29.
21. Carlyle, Sarror Resorrus, p. 179. See also his Heroes andHero- Worship, p. 45, and Post
and Presenr, in Works, 109-91.
22. Shelley, The Revolr of Islorn canto I, ii. 347-50.
23. Shelley, Promerheus Unbound, act I, 11. 487-90.
24. Shelley, "Queen Mab."
25. Wordsworth, "Ode: Intimations of Immortality."
26. Clark. Shelley's Prose. p. 279.
27. Ibid., p. 316.
28. Shelley, Promerheus Unbound, act 4, 11. 565-68.
29. See Richard Garnett's privately printed pamphlet, Shelley and Lord Beacornfield
(London: British Library, 1887).
30. Benjamin Disraeli, The Revolutionary Epic (London: Edward Moxon, 1834), bk. 2.1. 42.
31. Clark, Shelley's Prose, p. 297.
32. Ibid.. p. 261.
33. Ibid., pp. 213, 232.
34. Ibid... DO. 281. 286.
35. See, for example, Shelley's attack on the "false view of the Golden Age" in his "Essay on
Christianity," ibid., p. 21 1.
36. Ibid., pp. 316, 287; Shelley, "Ode: to the Wen Wind."
37. Clark, Shelley's Prose, P. 282.
38. Ibid.. o. 283:
39. lbid.: b. 232
40. [bid.; 287.
41. Ibid., p. 230.
42. Ibid., p. 212.
43. Ibid., p. 231.
44. Ibid., p. 232.
45. Ibid., pp. 232-33.
46. Ibid.. o. 236.
.
..
p.
48. Ibrd., pp. 291-92.
49. J. S. Mill, Aurobmgraphy (New York: Columt
liversily Press, 1944), p. 100. Cf.
Carlyle, "Signs of the Tlmes," p. 67; and Soflor
?us, p. 153.
50. Clark, Shelley's Prose, p. 292.
51. Ibld.. D. 293.
52. ~israeli,"Speech at Aylesbury"(June 26, 1847). in T. E. Kebble, SelecredSpeeches of Eod
of Beaconsfield (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1882). 1:178.
53. Clark, Shelley's Prose, p. 245.
54. Ibid., p. 248.
55. Ibid., p. 292.
56. Shelley, "Ode: to the West Wind."
57. Clark, Shelley's Prose, pp. 296-97.
58. Shelley, "Ode: to the West Wind."